


A Most Dangerous Game

by SuleikasGhosts13



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Hunters & Hunting, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:23:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuleikasGhosts13/pseuds/SuleikasGhosts13
Summary: During Malcolm's time with the FBI, he had run-ins with several interesting individuals. One in particular got too close.





	A Most Dangerous Game

**Author's Note:**

> Still writing 5289. New chapter will be out in a couple of days, but I wanted to get this one out.

"Special Agent Bright, what a pleasure!"

The prison cell was dimly lit. The energy-saving bulbs cast everything in a sickly pale, white light. In the middle stood a metallic table, where a man in his mid-thirties sat shackled. His shaggy manes hung loosely around his chin; his beard full and unkempt. He looked exhausted, yet his rich brown eyes glistened.

_**Horace A. Jackson. Beast of the White Mountains**__**.**_

It'd been Malcolm's twelfth successful case with the Bureau. A thrill killer who targeted passing thru-hikers in the woods near his property. Malcolm had tracked him down to a small 20th-century Saltbox house just outside North Conway and, after an intense two hours of negotiations, convinced Jackson to surrender.

Several months later found the profiler revisiting Jackson in incarceration with the lure of new information. The authorities weren't able to identify all the remains and suspected that there lay still more, buried high up in the mountains. But Horace A. Jackson refused to speak with anyone, save one.

"'Afternoon, Horace," Malcolm replied, carrying an armful of files and maps. "I hope you don't mind, but I invited our specialist in topography, Agent Lincoln."

Percy Lincoln followed suit, a tweedy fellow with frosty blonde hair and spectacles. Judging by his grimace, Jackson did mind, but said nothing.

"The Bureau appreciates your coorporation," he continued. _Keep talking, _he thought. _Get him to open up._

"I'm not doing this for the FBI," Jackson interjected. "And I'm not doing it for some wacky sense of **_atonement_**." He spat the last word like it churned his stomach.

"No, I don't suppose you regret killing these people," Agent Lincoln muttered under his breath, clearly disgusted. Malcolm glared at him.

"Not like anything that I'll say or do will ever satisfy their families," the serial killer responded hotly. "They'll never understand that I didn't have a choice."

Lincoln opened his mouth to argue, but his partner interrupted him. "Because of your father, right?"

Jackson huffed, "Yeah. You've met him before; you know what he's like."

Malcolm nodded. Mr. Daniel Jackson was a cruel man, a social Darwinist. In his interrogations, he discovered that during Horace's childhood, any signs of weakness were answered with severe beatings. The senior Jackson was also a survivalist and hunter, dragging his children into the isolation of the wilderness. They were forced to torture and kill animals of varying sizes, and to enjoy it (at least outwardly, if they knew what was good for them).

"The man's a sadist. You've spent your entire life feeling powerless," Malcolm said cautiously. "Forever at his mercy. If you were ever to escape, you had to learn to turn his strengths against him. That's why you went after male hikers, they provided you the necessary training to hunt your father."

Jackson smiled laudatorily. "You always read me so well."

A chill settled at the base of Malcolm's spine. He never revealed to him that during the course of their investigations, the authorities learned that his father hatched a plot of his own. Mr. Jackson had surmised his son's intentions, stockpiling weapons and gear. Frankly, his junior didn't stand a chance. He was too confident to consider the possibility of exposure, and would've walked into an ambush. If the police hadn't intervened, Horace Jackson would've been murdered outright.

His victims... their deaths were all utterly meaningless. Senselessly pawns in a game of cat and mouse between father and son.

"Hilarious, isn't it?" Jackson contemplated, snapping the profiler out of his musings.

"What is?" Snarled Lincoln.

"I never realized just how liberating a jail cell could be," he chuckled. "My dad hasn't spoken to me in ages, he isn't allowed to. If I had known this, I probably would've committed a less **_extreme _**crime. Maybe rob a bank."

Agent Lincoln looked ready to blow a gasket.

"Can you run us through the events of your first victim, Horace?" Malcolm added quickly, grabbing his Caran d'Ache pen.

"Well, the first wasn't **_technically mine_**. I think the papers called him Charles- uh- Charlie-? Anyways, he was a day-hiker who went missing back in the early 90s. Dad and I- we found him. We were deer hunting, you see, and spotted him hanging off a cliff. He called to us for help, but Pa told me it wasn't worth risking our necks. Sick bastard probably enjoyed watching him fall. His body- it was never recovered- it's still over here-"

Jackson pulled one of the maps towards him and started labeling sites.

The following hours were spent detailing the final moments of each victim, in regions that expanded from Maine to New Jersey. It wasn't just Jackson's kills the pair were responsible for, but leaving injured parties to fend for themselves or providing bad intel to lost backpackers. No wonder he could leap to homicide so easily.

2001 was the year Jackson **_really _**began, a whole two years earlier than law enforcement had originally speculated. He'd been bow hunting and had given yet another misguided traveler wrong directions, when he had decided to trail them instead. The hiker had the misfortune of wearing similar clothes to Jackson's abusive parent, so he fantasized about piercing him with an arrow. Taking a life proved too exhilarating to stop, and a plan took shape.

"Marvin Bloom," Jackson announced, marking the estimate area where he'd hidden poor Marvin.

By suppertime, they had closed 22 missing persons investigations, identified five bodies, and discovered six more. They were also building a pretty solid case against Daniel Jackson, hopefully one strong enough for life imprisonment.

"Eh, that should be enough for today," Malcolm stretched in his chair. "Thank you again for agreeing to meet with us."

"Anytime, Special Agent Bright," Jackson fiddled his thumbs. "Err, before you leave, if I could speak with you? In private?"

He glanced at Agent Lincoln, who folded his arms across his chest. Malcolm knew he was impatient to vacate the facility, but wasn't willing to abandon his colleague.

"It's alright, Lincoln. I'll only be a minute."

His coworker seemed unconvinced. Nevertheless, he gathered their materials and practically bolted from the room.

Malcolm returned to his seat, "So, Horace-"

"My lawyer tells me Pa was taken into custody," he sounded awestruck. "He also tells me that when he resisted arrest, you pulled some kind of karate chop on him-"

"Jui-jitsu," the young agent corrected, "and I only subdued him."

"You straight up kicked his ass," the murderer grinned from ear to ear. "Don't be coy; my lawyer said you gave him a shiner and a wealth of bruises."

"It was preferable to the alternative," Malcolm shrugged. "He wasn't coming quietly, and using my sidearm would've escalated the situation."

"What I wouldn't have given to be a fly on that wall," Jackson whistled. "Pray someone caught that on camera."

Then he leaned forward, speaking softly, "Why didn't you do that to me?"

Malcolm silently stared into those dark brown eyes of his, his breath caught in his throat. 

"Why didn't you hurt me?"

He swallowed hard. Malcolm blinked furiously and switched his gaze to his palms. They had gone clammy. The tremors started up.

_Because we're the same_, Martin's words echoed in his brain.

Finally, he found his voice, "I believed I could get further with diplomacy. The evidence- my profile- it all pointed to the theory that you were running away from something...or someone. If I gave you a way out, I figured neither of us would have to resort to violence."

"You couldn't have been more accurate," the serial killer's head bobbed in acknowledgment.

"We found traces of decomposed flowers in the gravesites," Malcolm pressed on. "You felt a great deal of shame during your cooling off periods."

Jackson choked up. "After the adrenaline died down, I- they were hard to look at."

"You also broke every mirror in your home. You couldn't even stand to look at yourself."

"I was turning into my Pa. I saw his face everytime I gazed into my reflection. It's like a bad dream."

_I can relate, _Malcolm pondered. "And yet you are so opposed to any form of penance..."

"It doesn't matter anymore," his voice turned gruff. "None of it matters anymore."

"Then why were you so insistent with requesting my presence? If it's of such little consequence, why isn't any random officer good enough to take down the particulars?" _Or why bother talking at all?_

Once the words were spoken, Malcolm couldn't retract them, however much he wanted to. The issue had been bugging him for hours, ever since strolling through that iron door and heard this suspect state he didn't desire redemption. _Then why?_

An older Malcolm Bright would later bemoan such an amateurish misstep, but this was an agent still relatively fresh with the Bureau.

Horace Jackson reached over and grasped Malcolm's sweaty hands, the rattling of his chains scraping against the table. As the skin around his ears and the back of his neck burned white hot, Malcolm glanced up to find the serial killer's face just inches apart from his.

"You know, I've never really felt safe with anyone before," he murmured. "Not my parents, not my siblings, and I never had any friends... but with you..."

Malcolm's chest felt constricted. With a pained expression, he tried to redirect him, "Horace, I'm not- your life isn't over-"

"Exactly," came the ghost of his reply. "I'll never step out of here alive. I've made my peace with that. But I don't need bail- I have you, right here, right now-"

Natheless, everything before Malcolm appeared as a black hole of a destiny. At this moment, Horace was fighting a capital punishment trial in New Hampshire. Besides ending the lives of seventeen civilians, he had slaughtered a sheriff snooping around his property. He was a vicious killer and completely untrustworthy.

Even if the older man was being sincere, this wasn't the sort of relationship he could revisit. He'd barely left his father and his manipulation behind.

As Malcolm pulled away, the suspect sobbed, "Special Agent Bright, please... you're the only one who knows me- **_really knows me_**-"

He stood, trying not to watch the spectacle in front of him. Knocking hard on the cell door, he heard shouting. 

"AM I THAT REPULSIVE TO YOU?!"

Malcolm's features softened.

_"No."_


End file.
